The Coral Kingdom

19

Painfully Hanrald grasped at another step, and then one more, pulling himself up as he had for the last half hour-one stone stair at a time. The deep wound in his side wracked his body with waves of agony. He had no idea how much blood he had lost, but from the amount of the crimson liquid that continued to drift around him, he knew that he must be pretty thoroughly drained.

But Brigit still wouldn't leave him. He had tried again to persuade her, halfway up the agonizing climb, when he had been convinced that he couldn't make it. Again she had insisted that she would wait until he was ready. Ultimately the only course left to the earl-the only way to save the elfwoman-was to make this climb.

Meanwhile the sister knight defended them both, fighting below him on the stairway, backing up the steps, holding the scrags at bay if they tried to pursue too closely. Fortunately the great beasts usually hung well back, having learned several painful lessons about the Synnorian warrior's skill with her keen elven steel.

During the duration of his climb, Hanrald noticed steadily growing illumination above him, the promise of escape that had kept him moving, had brought him back from the edge of utter despair. The steps were very steep, and he knew that he had climbed more than a hundred, though he had forgotten to keep an exact count, a fact that he chided himself about as he neared the top.

Finally Hanrald came around a spiral in the staircase that ended in an aperture above him-a rectangular gap that was the source of the pale green light, the illumination that had drawn him this far. Cautiously he raised his head through the hole, discovering that they had indeed reached the top of a tower. Aqua-colored seawater surrounded him, stretching to the far limits of the horizon. Above-and so terribly, impossibly far away-he could see the sun-dappled reflections of the surface.

Without hesitation, the knight crawled onto the floor of the flat stone platform that capped the tower, finding a circle no more than twelve feet across, lofted more than a hundred feet above the floor of the sea. He saw that the tower stood proudly at the rim of the great undersea bowl. Below him, some distance away, he made out the multidomed structure of the huge palace.

Among the towers and domes of that edifice, he observed many companies of scrags and sahuagin, mere dots in the water at this distance. Hanrald crouched flat on the exposed surface, thankful that, for the moment at least, none of the monsters seemed to notice the human's presence. Instead, they swarmed about the palace, clearly focused on an enemy closer to hand.

Brigit scrambled out of the opening beside him and looked back down the stairway. "The scrags are just down the stairs," she warned. "They have no intention of letting us get away."

"Look!" cried Hanrald, spotting a heavy metal trapdoor lying open beside the entrance. With great effort, the two of them lifted the portal and dropped it over the opening, where they swiftly bolted the barrier shut.

"Rest for a moment," the sister knight said quietly, and for once, the man needed no coaxing. He slumped, all but unconscious, onto the flat coral surface.

The elf stood up and studied their surroundings. Sunlight brightened the surface of the sea, reflecting from the waves like multiple facets of diamonds, still at least three hundred feet above her. Many spires like the one they now occupied rose around them, and she noticed numerous shell-covered, domed structures dotting the rolling surface of the great reef below.

A swarm of creatures near the largest of these domes caught her attention, and she saw bubbles and turbulence in the water there. Then a familiar shape-the longship! — moving slowly, emerged from the turbulence. Even from this distance, a mile or more away, it seemed to Brigit that the Princess of Moonshae wallowed heavily in the water.

Still, the elfwoman's heart filled with renewed hope. She leaped to her feet, her silver breastplate gleaming in the bright water, and frantically began to wave.

"We're sinking!" Brandon snarled from the stern, angrily watching seawater flood into the longship's hull. It seemed to him a cruel irony: A powerful magical barrier protected the ship from tons of water weighing heavily above them, yet a simple gash in the planking seemed likely to doom them all to a watery grave. Already the vessel wallowed sluggishly, and in a few more minutes, she would inevitably become too heavy to rise through the sea.

Alicia noticed, for the first time since they had broken free of the dome, that the lanky figure of her changestaff had crawled back into the bow of the longship. It perched, like a gigantic mantis, near the figurehead, as if it tried to crouch out of the way of the frantic voyagers in the hull.

Her mind seized upon a desperate idea, and it was obvious no one else had another plan to suggest. "There!" the princess commanded, speaking to the creature of wood, the powerful servant of the goddess. . and herself. Would it comprehend? The princess pointed to the gash in the ship's hull, addressing the animated tree. "Can you seal that hole-stop the leak?"

Slowly, deliberately, the creature extended a limb into the water gushing through the gap, and then another. Finally it reached into the hole with its remaining branches, gaining solid purchase on the outside of the hull. Then those sturdy limbs contracted, pulling the trunk of the tree into the long, narrow crack, compressing the flow of water until the spurting leak had slowed to no more than a thin trickle. The changestaff pressed itself even more tightly into the gap, blending into the planks of the hull, and in another moment, the leak stopped entirely.

"By the gods!" Knaff grunted in gruff appreciation. "We might make it yet!"

They had no time for congratulations, however. A quick look in any direction showed huge schools of swimming scrags and sahuagin, rapidly closing in to attack. Columns of sea trolls formed the vanguard of the onrushing force, while vast waves of sahuagin followed quickly in the wake of their larger cousins. The creatures might have been schools of minnows when viewed from a distance, but they rapidly closed the gap, quickly expanding to more menacing dimensions.

It seemed the creatures of the sea had the Princess of Moonshae dead to rights. The longship wallowed in the depths of the sea, short of air and slowed by the unnatural environment. Everywhere the crew of Brandon's vessel faced a teeming collection of hungry monsters of the sea, while the humans had difficulty even drawing enough breath to stop panting and gasping.

The air in the magically enclosed longship continued to grow increasingly foul. The crew had been underwater for nearly a full day, and the strain showed on faces streaked with sweat, mouths hanging open, reflexively gasping for oxygen that was not to be had.

And yet, under these conditions, the northmen and Ffolk prepared to fight their most desperate battle yet. Never before had they encountered nearly the number of beasts that now swarmed toward them. Above and below them, to port and starboard and astern-indeed, everywhere but directly in front of the ship-the gathering schools of warriors approached. The crew could clearly see that they faced far more attackers now than had gathered to block their initial approach to Kyrasti.

Yet no one would even acknowledge the possibility of defeat.

The voyagers universally rejected the thought that now, after their miraculous rescue of the High King, they might fail to reach the surface or see the shores of Moonshae again. Every man and woman aboard vowed quietly that he or she would see that sky, breathe the fresh air that hovered so close above them.

Besides the warriors thronging through the water, the humans faced the reality of yet another grim threat. Brandon and Knaff, in the stern, saw clear evidence of the ominous form that slowly followed in their wake.

The image of the giant squid grew ever larger, emerging from the darkness of Kyrasti to advance toward the still-sluggish longship. The Prince of Gnarhelm saw that the creature delayed beginning its attack, obviously waiting until the troops surrounding the vessel had a chance to initiate the assault.

"Look there, to the west!" shouted Knaff the Elder, his voice booming through the hull of the longship. They followed his pointing figure past the bow to the one region where they had previously seen no threat, gradually discerning another mass of warriors advancing rapidly toward the Princess of Moonshae. These submarine troops swam through the water in long ranks, ranging across the full depth of the reef waters from surface to floor. Hundreds of fresh warriors surged toward them, still far away but closing the distance quickly, approaching from the only path of escape that had lain before them.

"More of them?" groaned Alicia, following the loyal helmsman's indication. The additional figures emerged from the haze of distance, swarming toward them as quickly as the palace guards.

Alicia's eye, however, was drawn to a flickering point of brightness in the direction of this new advancing force, yet not so far away. She looked more closely, positive she had seen the flash of silver or some other bright metal. Then she was certain.

"It's Brigit!" the princess cried, gasping for enough breath to shout in the foul atmosphere of the hull. She pointed to the spot of radiance, barely making out the desperately waving arm. "There! We've got to get to her!"

Slowly, with noticeable reluctance, the Princess of Moonshae pushed through the water, cutting a course toward the knight, but unable to avoid hundreds of savage enemies on all sides.

Luge huddled behind his shield, a wet and bloody sword in his hand. The terrors of this undersea journey continued to assail him, yet like any true man of Gnarhelm, he stood ready to follow his captain wherever Brandon led. He had slain sahuagin, sliced deep wounds into scrags, battled sharks and worse, all for the love of his prince.

But now he felt something even more horrifying, darker and far more sinister than any of the mortal foes he had battled to this point. The evil centered in the giant squid that pursued them. The beast had terrified Luge when he had first witnessed it in the flooding dome, and even then somehow it had reminded him of a black-bearded man who had come to him in The Black Salmon Inn.

In the terror of that recognition, he remembered things about the crew's last night in Corwell, memories his mind had tried very hard to shut out. He saw the death of his friend Roloff, the terrified sailor strangled by the dark man, then cast casually into the harbor. Finally he knew a sense of obscene violation, and he recalled the magic the stranger had worked on him, twisting Luge's mind to the evil fellow's own dark will.

Then, not knowing the cause of his compulsion, though it grew to irresistible proportions as the squid neared the Princess of Moonshae, Luge felt a different urge. He wanted to serve, to help this monster.

He waited only for the creature to tell him what to do.

Brigit and Hanrald clung to the narrow platform, hearing a steady battering against the metal door from below. However, the iron bolts holding the portal shut were thick and uncorroded. It didn't seem that their most dangerous threat would come from that direction.

That, reflected Brigit grimly, left only every other direction as a potential source of sudden, violent death.

"Do they see us?" asked Hanrald weakly, unable to focus his eyes on the distant longship.

"Yes-they're coming," the sister knight told him, trying to make her voice sound more cheerful than her thoughts. "They'll be here soon. Just try to rest for a few more minutes."

In truth, the Princess of Moonshae remained near the distant palace, lumbering through the water with barely perceptible motion. Clearly she had again suffered grievous damage, and Brigit doubted it would reach the pair of knights before Keane's spells ceased to protect them.

"Yes. . rest," Hanrald agreed dreamily, closing his eyes and again slumping to the platform.

Frantically Brigit looked around for some source of hope-and it was then that she saw the new force of swimmers approaching the battle. They came from beyond her tower, swarming straight toward Brigit and Hanrald and, beyond them, the embattled longship. Brigit saw hundreds of the piscine forms, and she knew that these fresh assailants would reach her long before the Princess of Moonshae could get close.

The female knight noticed something different about these warriors. They swam more naturally, and faster, than did the scaly creatures of the Coral Kingdom. Even in the depths, light glinted from sharp spearheads and tridents, growing steadily more visible as the hundreds of swimming figures rushed closer.

She could tell for certain that the newcomers would reach them before the longship did, and she knew that she and Hanrald, exposed on this high platform, would make easy prey for the numerous attackers.

Nevertheless, she raised her sword and prepared to exact a stiff price for her life.

On the ship, the voyagers also watched the newly arriving force spread out, thinning their ranks to drive forward in a final burst of speed. In moments, they swarmed around the tower top where Brigit stood, but the newcomers pressed on, inflicting no harm to the elfwoman.

"Mermen!" cried Tristan Kendrick in sudden recognition. "They're here to help us!" He indicated the swimming figures, now sweeping past Brigit and Hanrald, surging toward the undersea warriors of Kyrasti that now advanced against the longship.

The mermen warriors of Marqillor's realm swept into the ranks of Sythissal's army with brutal savagery. In a matter of a few seconds, a vast, seething melee swirled through the water as mermen, sahuagin, and scrags darted high and low, both companies quickly entangling in a desperate underwater clash.

Dozens of mermen surrounded the scrag columns. The fish-tailed humanoids darted in, stabbing with their long, sharp weapons and then diving away before the larger, less nimble scrags could return the assault. Schools of sahuagin and mermen mingled in slashing attacks, many clouds of pink froth and motionless bodies marking the wounded and slain on both sides.

The warriors of Deepvale were outnumbered by the defenders of Kyrasti, but they used the speed and surprise of their attack to disrupt each monstrous formation. As it had when the Princess of Moonshae made her bold approach to the submarine palace, the monsters' inability to concentrate seemed to cost them their chance for an easy victory. Still, however, the melee raged through the sea, at great cost in lives to both sides.

"The squid-it's closing in!" shouted Alicia, looking to the rear with growing alarm as the beast rushed at the ship. A volley of arrows-a small barrage, for only four of the Corwellian bowmen still lived-plunked into the water, but the huge beast ignored the pinpricks.

Cursing, Knaff clutched the helm, holding the longship steady. There was nothing else he could do, no evasive action that could hope to elude the monstrous pursuer. The squid spurted forward, reaching out with long tendrils toward the Princess of Moonshae's stern.

Brigit Cu'Lyrran, Mistress Captain of the Sisters of Synnoria, sat atop the tower, still hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the Trackless Sea, and watched an army of mermen make their slashing attack against the predatory humanoids of the Coral Kingdom. A sense of dull amazement possessed her. She still couldn't bring herself to believe that these hundreds of warriors had passed her without attacking. Where they came from, who or what had summoned them-these remained mysteries.

"We fought well, Sister Knight," Hanrald said weakly. The human sat up enough to look over the edge of the platform, watching the longship approach through the murk, seeing the battles raging through the sea. The vessel still bore the Helm of Zulae, gleaming brilliantly at her prow, and the ship approached them slowly. Nevertheless, their companions had nearly a half-mile to go before they reached the stranded knights.

"That we did," Brigit replied, kissing him gently on his pale forehead. "I'm proud to have fought beside a knight such as you."

But already her words sounded thick in their ears, and as Hanrald reached out a hand, it met increasing resistance-the pressure of the water, a clear indication that the protection of the spell had begun to wane.

The Earl of Fairheight felt a sudden penetrating chill, and with a sidelong look at Brigit, he knew that she had experienced the same thing. The sea had surrounded them ever since they left the ship, but now it pressed against their skin, obstructing movement and blocking speech as the first of Keane's spells, the enchantment of free action, slowly dissipated. If it hadn't been for their heavy armor, the natural buoyancy of their bodies would have floated the knights right off the platform.

With the passing of this effect, they knew that it was only a matter of time-minutes, or perhaps merely seconds-before the protection of the second enchantment faded.

That, of course, was the spell of water breathing.

The time was now, Deirdre knew. Her teleportation spell, coupled with the knowledge gained from her mirror, gave her the ability to travel instantly to the point of decision. This time, however, before she cast the spell, she picked up her mirror. Wrapping the glass once more in its leather blanket, she clutched it beneath her arm and concentrated upon the precise enchantment.

Teleportation was always a tricky matter. Normally the spell depended upon the sorcerer traveling to a place that she knew very well; otherwise it was impossible to coordinate the point of arrival with the real world. Although an error of five feet to one side or the other might not make a lot of difference, a mistake that brought a magic-user through a teleportation five feet too low would almost certainly prove fatal.

But such was the unerring accuracy of the visions in Deirdre's mirror that, so long as she was certain to take reasonable care, the sorceress had no difficulty performing a teleportation to a coordinate she had pinpointed through her arcane scrying glass.

Now she carefully chanted the words to her spell, calling into her mind the picture she had witnessed scarce moments before. In a twinkling instant, she vanished from Caer Callidyrr.

As she expected, the mirror provided her with an uncanny sense of precision, for she arrived in the stern of the longship, appearing so suddenly that Knaff the Elder nearly stumbled over the stern in astonishment. Brandon gaped at her in shock as she brusquely stepped passed him, advancing to the transom and staring intently through the wake.

There, drawing quickly nearer, she made out the shape of the giant squid-the being she would no longer call Malawar.

Marqillor's warriors ripped through the line of Sinioth's followers, individual mermen diving amid the scrags and sahuagin, stabbing with long spears while they used small, tortoiseshell bucklers to deflect the weapons of the scaly carnivores.

At the same time, the squid closed on the stern of the long-ship, racing upward with lightning speed, reaching with those grasping tentacles to wrap the Princess of Moonshae in a crushing grip.

However, at this precise moment, the younger Princess of Callidyrr appeared on the longship's rear deck. Northmen cursed and growled at the woman's startling sorcerous arrival, some making holy signs in an attempt to ward off evil, but Deirdre ignored them all. She had attention for only one target, and that one swam in the dark waters of the Princess of Moonshae's wake.

"You!" Deirdre cried, her gaze piercing the squid's body with almost physical force. "You escaped me once-but not again!" She yanked the leather wrapping off the object she held in her hands, revealing a gleaming surface of reflective glass.

Then Deirdre raised her hands, still holding the crystal pane, and the horrific monster recoiled from her gesture-or was it the mirror that caused the avatar to cower? Tentacles lashed through the sea as the creature dove, dropping out of sight beneath the longship's hull. The next moment, the squid shot upward, slamming into the keel, rocking the vessel violently. The sudden impact knocked Deirdre and a number of crew members to the deck.

The young woman screamed-out of fear for her mirror, not for herself. Landing flat on her back, she clutched the glass to her chest, and somehow it remained unbroken. All but spitting in her fury, Deirdre sat up, gingerly cradling her mirror, trying to scramble to her feet.

A sailor lurched forward from his bench, his shortsword raised, lunging toward Deirdre. He was a short man, but the gleaming steel in his hands driving toward her breast amplified his image in the horror-stricken eyes of the princess. She kicked out at him, tumbling backward as the man brutally stepped on her leg. Trapped, she squirmed helplessly, holding out the mirror like a fragile shield. Her attacker raised his sword and started the blade on a fatal plunge toward the young woman's heart.

"Luge!" shouted Brandon, furiously leaping after the crewman, but it was too late. The tip of the man's bloody weapon drove at the mirror, and the dark-haired princess cried out in anticipated pain.

Hot magic crackled through the air, exploding from Keane's finger as the mage stood in the bow. His spell arced down the length of the hull, seizing the sailor in a grip of paralyzing power. Luge's back arched and his lips stretched back from his clenched teeth as violent, killing magic wracked his body. In a second, his body, scorched as if it had been burned in a fire, dropped, rigid, to the deck.

A tentacle lashed over the gunwale, but Alicia chopped fiercely at it with her sword, sending the limb writhing back into the water. The shadowy form of the squid's body suddenly loomed into sight, its whipping tendrils flailing into the boat, seeking the black-haired princess. Deirdre scrambled back and raised the mirror, confronting the beast with its own monstrous image.

"I name you!" she shrieked. "You are Coss-Axell-Sinioth-and you are mine!" Triumphantly she lifted the glass high, shoving the reflective surface forward, straight toward the looming avatar.

Then the vengeance of Talos ripped forth, and the form of the avatar writhed in the grip of something greater than itself. The mirror shattered of its own will, shards of glass exploding outward to puncture the monster in a thousand places, rending the huge body into a gory mass of bleeding wounds.

Sinioth's bellow of agony sliced through the water, a wailing screech of unspeakable torment. A shimmering wall of crystalline fragments circled the squid, driving through its flesh, tearing the huge form into pieces and then ripping those pieces into smaller and smaller parts.

Deirdre stood awestruck, overwhelmed by the stunning release of power. She stepped involuntarily backward, raising her hands before her face to ward off… what? The circling, silvery specks of glass continued to tear at the monster until there was nothing left to rend, but then the magical storm swirled back toward her.

Slivers of the broken mirror whirled around her, forming a glittering cocoon, obscuring her from view. Then, as if propelled by some invisible command, the spiraling cyclone of glass enclosed her even more tightly, until the shards flew straight toward the woman herself. They drove like needles into her skin, but left no marks, dripped no blood.

Deirdre screamed in overwhelming horror, collapsing to the deck and curling into a ball of terrified flesh. She slapped frantically at her skin as the darts of glass pierced her, yet still she showed no evidence of wounds. For several seconds, she continued to scream, and then her cries faded to a whimpering wail. Finally, shivering, she pressed her face against the planks of the hull and lay there. The only sound she made was a soft moaning.

Robyn knelt beside her daughter, and Tristan brought a woolen blanket to cover her. Gently he lifted her in his arms, noting with surprise how much smaller she seemed now. "Sleep, child. . brave daughter," he said softly, cradling her head on his shoulder. Slowly her trembling lessened, though it did not cease altogether.

Knaff guided the longship beside a tall tower, where they had seen Brigit and Hanrald. The knights expended their last breaths as the vessel approached, but they crawled to the edge of the platform and, weighted by their armor, toppled over the side into the hull. Even the stale air in the Princess of Moonshae began to restore Brigit's strength, though Hanrald lay pallid and motionless on his back.

The sea around them continued to brighten, shifting in reverse through the spectrum of purple to pale green they had experienced on the way to the bottom. As all the crew felt the increasing strain of breathing the foul air in the ship, the undersides of individual waves came into view. Closer and closer to the surface the longship came as every voyager stared eagerly upward, unconsciously straining for the clean air.

Around them, the creatures of the Coral Kingdom remained disorganized, losing heart after the death of their immortal master and driven into flight by the savage attacks of the mermen of Deepvale. The mermen harried their enemies back toward the confines of the palace, and the monsters seemed content to withdraw to that massive lair, leaving the rescuers to their well-earned freedom.

And then finally the Princess of Moonshae crested the surface, sending a cascade of water showering off the hull. She wallowed low in the waves, though her gunwales remained safely above the waterline. Although bright sun washed around them, no breath of wind moved the stale air away. They could still barely draw a breath.

It was Keane who, after a moment, understood the nature of the problem. He scrambled into the bow and swiftly removed the Helm of Zulae from the longship's figurehead. In an instant, all of the stagnant air gusted away, replaced by a fresh sea breeze.

Hanrald's wound stopped bleeding finally, and as Brigit and Tavish affixed a bandage, the knight smiled wanly, too weak to talk. Yet when he took the sister knight's hand, the pressure of his grip spoke volumes of words.

Brandon came to kneel beside the Ffolkman who had proved such a stalwart companion. For a moment, the two proud warriors clasped hands.

"Your diversion," the prince told the two knights sincerely. "That's what cleared the path to the palace. Without it, we could never have made it."

Then the Prince of Gnarhelm rose to his feet, stepping to the charred body of the sailor, Luge. The pouch of the man's tunic lay open, a flap torn away from the inside lining of the crude garment. Several silvery objects had fallen out, scattering on the deck. Brandon picked one of them up, hearing it tinkle slightly, and Keane leaned over to examine another of the tiny balls.

"It's magical," said Keane, after casting a quick detection spell. "I'd wager these are how they kept locating us out in the middle of the ocean."

"Poor devil," observed the captain. "I don't think he ever knew what it was that had hold of him."

Closer to the stern, the High King of the Ffolk rested in the arms of his wife. Deirdre had fallen into an exhausted slumber. The princess seemed almost comatose, though they could see no sign of any wounds on her skin. Nevertheless, the sight of those sharp slivers of glass piercing her skin remained with them all, leaving a blanket of grave concern.

Alicia sat beside them, dazedly remembering the events of the past day. Too exhausted to move for the time being, she felt weak and dizzy-a delayed reaction, she knew, to the tension of the battle and rescue.

"My love," Tristan said, gently touching Robyn's cheek. His voice choked, blocking further words.

A shower of spray cascaded into the hull as Marqillor rose from the water, resting his elbows easily on the longship's gunwale, his tail splashing lazily in the water below.

"Glad you made it up here," said the merman with a grin. "If it hadn't been for you, Tristan, I'd still be drying out in that cell."

"I, for one, will welcome the chance to dry out!" sighed the king, reaching out to clasp the merman's hand. "But thank you, too, my friend."

"We did it together," replied the Prince of Deepvale. "It took rare courage for you to win my freedom. My people have tried to return the favor."

"How many did you lose?" asked the king, his tone dropping in concern. The carnage among the mermen, he feared, had been horrendous, yet without them, the longship's crew certainly would have been overwhelmed in the depths.

"Too many," came the sad reply. "But not without some gain. I think it will be many years before the scrags decide to make war against Deepvale again."

"And the Moonshaes, too-we can hope," replied the king.

"Farewell, Tristan Kendrick!" offered the merman then. He pushed himself from the hull, arcing his back and splitting the water in a clean backward dive.

Keane came to Alicia as she rose and leaned against the gunwale, looking across the sun-dappled expanse of sea. For once, he found his voice when he needed to.

"When you were in the water," he began seriously, "it seemed as though my own life was hanging by a mere shred. I understood something then, Princess. Without you, my life would have no meaning; I would have no reason to exist." The tall magic-user cleared his throat, the familiar awkwardness returning.

"I guess what I'm trying to say," he continued hesitantly, "is that if you want me, I'll be-"

"Ho? What a ride!" boomed Brandon, coming up between the pair and wrapping a brawny arm around each. Keane squirmed uncomfortably while Alicia laughingly disengaged herself.

"Yes. . yes, it was that and more," she agreed softly. She looked at Brandon, and then back to Keane, offering each a warm smile. Then she slipped between them and walked by herself to the bow.

A fresh breeze rose from the south, bulging the longship's sail and propelling her smoothly northward, across seas that lay smooth and inviting, a clear path beckoning them toward the Moonshaes.

Toward home.